Please Be Seated

As I sit here in the airport waiting for my flight to Indianapolis, which is delayed for an hour because of “severe weather,” I wonder: Is anyone besides me convinced that airport seats are deliberately designed as devices of torture? I can just imagine “Acme Chair Co.,” run by sadistic engineers who perform consumer tests by observing people sitting in their chairs in a glassed-in torture chamber...er, test lab. They lure unsuspecting people with the promise of fifty dollars if they'll just sit in an Acme chair for an hour. Who wouldn’t say yes to that?

But ten minutes in, the test user’s back muscles spasm. She shifts in the chair.

“Don’t move!” barks the voice from the speaker.

Two minutes later, she bangs her elbow on the armrest. “Arghk!”

“Silence!”

Twenty more minutes go by, and the molded plastic seat is boring into the poor girl’s spine. "Can I get up for just a second?” she pleads into the empty room.

“Never! You want that fifty bucks, don’t you?”

“I can’t stand it anymore! I’ll die if I have to wait in that chair another minute.”

On the other side of the glass, the Acme engineers are high-five-ing each other, slapping each other silly, and uncorking the champagne. “We’ve done it again,” they announce to the VP of manufacturing, who’s stepped in to watch the test. “The perfect design. We’ll have this in every airport in the world by next week.”

Izzi-Freaks, sitting here waiting for my flight to board, I’m surrounded by tortured people who can’t wait to be released from their seats, from this airport, the past, or the anxiety of where they're headed.

The gray-haired executive next to me is practicing what sounds like a speech to shareholders, apologizing for this quarter’s slump. He’s terrified of getting kicked out and losing all the perks that come with his position. He’s waiting for applause or a cardboard box. I thought the girl on my other side was crying to herself until I saw the hands-free wire of her cell phone hanging from her hair like a slender braid. She’s crying to her boyfriend, petrified he’ll see his old girlfriend while she’s gone. She’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

(Insert note here: I don’t eavesdrop on purpose, but how can you help it in these close quarters?)

Freaks, everyone’s waiting for something. What’s your painful chair, and what are you waiting for? Post your comments, and pass the ice pack.